This won’t take long. These songs are about 35 years a part, and it’s possible (depending on your demographic and taste) you might like either, both or neither.

Rarely do we get into lyrics here, but both of these songs go into undefined intimate relationships. There is something going on here–we don’t know if it’s love, but there is DEFINITELY something up. Some might call it sketchy, friends with benefits, adulterous, we just don’t know. It’s the murk that many of us don’t experience but all of us are 1 degree of separation away from someone in that mode.

In both “Hotline Bling” by Drake and “Take It On The Run” by REO Speedwagon, the message is:

There’s something going on between us (undefined), something has changed, and now you’re doing something with someone or some other people, I don’t know exactly what’s going on, I’m not officially condemning it, but at one point my passive aggressiveness will plummet this whole relationship if it keeps up.

Someone else can do the psychology around it, I just found it interesting the whole half-committed shot across the bow that both of these songs provide.